The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."

Sunday, August 09, 2015

It's appropriate to wonder what a “movement” really is these days. Maybe
movements nowadays are really brands, to be evoked and stoked by
marketers and creators when needed. But it's hard to imagine a brand
transferring the power from the wealthy to the poor. It's hard to
imagine a brand being accountable to its membership, even if you could
be a member of a brand. And it's impossible for a brand to prefigure, to
get us ready to imagine and become the kind of people we'll need to be
to build the new world after capitalism.

Needless
to say, if the best part of your political career occurred before your
political career, there may be a problem with your political career.
Such is the case with Clinton’s. According to a new Gallup poll, more voters view her unfavorably than favorably, giving Clinton her worst net favorable score since 2007.

As has been the sad reality for some time now, the trouble comes not for breaking any news, not for investigative journalism, but for having wasted too much money -- and wasted it on bad radio.

The two of us have donated frequently to Pacifica over the years. We stopped in 2008 when Pacifica Radio lied to its audience, abused its audience and betrayed the trust and ethics public radio is supposed to operate under.

We're referring to the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that Pacifica announced they'd air -- only they couldn't.

So instead, they aired 'analysis' of it that would feature your questions left on their message board.

The 'analysis' -- we reported on this in "Radio: Panhandle Media" -- was as fake as anything Fox News could ever be accused of doing.

For those who missed it, Hillary would carry California in the primary. But, for some reason, the California-based broadcast featured only Barack supporters. They'd all endorsed him before the broadcast. A fact that Pacifica failed to tell you and presented multiple 'analysts' as objective observers.

Our report angered KPFA and we heard about it.

We "lied" about the message board, we were told.

We asked where?

And they insisted that we "lied" and that, sadly, there was a malfunction that wiped out the listener comments.

When? After the debate?

No.

It disappeared after we called the crap out.

How strange.

But what's stranger is that KPFA can't read.

If they could, they'd have realized pulling down the comments wouldn't disappear them.

When an, at best, centrist War Hawk occupied the White House, Pacifica Radio should have been in overdrive setting a left agenda for the country.

Instead they ran interference for Barack.

Over and over, they offered excuses, over and over they were unethical.

And that's true of no one as much as Amy Goodman who ended last week proving just how far she'd go to lie.

Ten leading Republican presidential candidates faced off in the first
debate of the 2016 presidential election Thursday night. Fox News
invited 10 candidates to take part: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris
Christie, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio,
Donald Trump and Scott Walker. Some analysts described the debate as the
Roger Ailes primary, since the head of Fox News had so much say in who
participated in the prime-time event. Seven other Republican
presidential candidates who didn’t make the cut participated in another
debate earlier in the evening. Fox News said it calculated its top 10
list by averaging five national polls, a process which came under fire
from polling agencies earlier this week.

That is how she ended Friday's show.

While it is true that liars like Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and Jon Stewart on Comedy Central had offered those critiques, they were baseless critiques.

As Alex Griswold (Mediate) noted on Wednesday:Maddow pointed out that Fox News promised to use the five
most recent nationally-recognized polls. However, Fox News omitted an
NBC/WSJ poll, despite being the fifth-most-recent respected
national poll. Instead, the network included an earlier poll from
Quinnipiac. The result was that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was not tied for tenth place with John Kasich,
and instead finished eleventh, relegating himself to the earlier
non-primetime debate. Maddow claimed that “it appears that what they did
is just kick out the poll results that would make it look too close,”
and accused the network of moving the goal-post.But Maddow is wrong on at least one point: It’s actually not true that Fox News “arbitrarily” ignored a poll they should have included, as the network itself announced hours before Maddow went on the air.One of the standards that Fox used was that polls had to
“[mirror] the ballot by reading all candidate names in random order and
without honorifics.” The NBC/WSJ poll did not. As Fox News wrote (again, hours before Maddow went on the air):

We did not include the highly-respected NBC/WSJ poll,
which is the fifth most recent poll, only because it did not meet our
criterion that the poll read the names of each Republican candidate in
the vote question. We would note, however, even though their ballot
question included Perry but did not name Kasich, the unaided “Kasich”
response tied the aided “Perry” response. In short, their results are
consistent with the results of the other polls in our review, and
consistent with the resulting placement in the Fox News debate.

This isn’t some arbitrary selection criteria Fox conjured out of thin air. By listing Perry and not Kasich, the NBC/WSJ poll put Kasich at a distinct disadvantage in the polling, and he still
tied. If Perry had actually won in that poll, Kasich would have
rightfully howled that Fox went with a poll that discriminated against
another candidate.

Furthermore, a political scientist wrote for The Hill on Tuesday that Maddow’s and Jon Stewart‘s criticisms of the “arbitrary” Fox decisions were based on a “totally mistaken” understanding of margin of error. On Monday, the stat-heads at FiveThirtyEight defended Fox’s polling decisions by writing that “There’s no perfect way to sort the candidates for a debate primary.”

Yet two days later, on Friday, Goodman was offering "some" criticism by "some" without noting the realities or the facts.

She's just a cheap liar.

And she who criticizes Fox News for who they put on the air as a GOP candidate is the same lying bitch who pimps Jill Stein as the Green Party's 2016 presidential candidate when the primary hasn't been held and Jill is far from the only candidate.

Someone who goes through the Columbia Records and Tapes catalogue picking out albums to order?

We're aware, aren't we, that outside of music, all KPFT can really claim is a once a week LGBT show. In fairness, Queer Voices is one of the best LGBT programs airing over the airwaves in the United States.

But what else does program director Ernesto offer?

A lot of syndicated programs that can be heard elsewhere including online.

That's the real story of Pacifica Radio.

There's another story to it: The rise of Pacifica.

Forgotten now but from 2003 through 2006, Pacifica actually mattered.

It was calling out the Iraq War, it was featuring coverage of war resisters, it was calling out government spying, it actually mattered.

And as a result, it actually had listeners.

And, surprise, surprise, when programming that actually mattered was airing, listeners were happy to donate.

It's the story the Pacifica Radio defenders never tell.

Because it indicts the current crap that they air, alleged public affairs programming that exist to churn out the vote for the Democratic Party.

For those who've forgotten, Goodman and others insisted in the 90s that this was what Mary Frances Berry, Chair of Pacifica, was trying to do.

And Goodman and others insisted they were opposed to that. They launched a long and public battle that only ended in November 2001.

They said they were saving Pacifica from becoming a mouth piece for the Democratic Party.

But that's all it is now.

Yes, ridiculous Ralph Nader has a program.

It's one that treats the ongoing Iraq War as a past issue that ended long ago.

Ridiculous Ralph Nader also uses his program to promote Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nomination.

Where's Cindy Sheehan's Pacifica Radio program?

They can give programs to hairy-backed Dave Zirin, Ralph Nader and assorted other men.

But not to Cindy who also refuses to sing from The Cult of St Barack hymnal.

Amy Goodman's a fake and a fraud.

If Pacifica going under means the death of her bad program, Pacifica can't go under soon enough.

The bad news is that when the Deepwater Horizon disaster,
the largest known gas and oil spill in history occurred, the Obama
administration actively colluded with oil companies to lie to the public
concealing the volume and extent of the leak. President Obama had the
US Navy and Coast Guard ban civilian overflights of the spill area, and
local police agencies bar civilian access to affected shorelines
apparently to prevent independent experts from assessing the extent of
damage and the speed at which the poisonous discharge was settling on
the sea floor. The Obama Justice Department even protected British
Petroleum by declaring that damage awards could only be assessed against
BP's holdings in the US Gulf rather than against its global assets on
six continents and oceans across the planet. And although
the president's party controlled both houses of Congress for another six
months, President Obama and his party sponsored not one piece
of legislation, not one administrative rule to rein in the plundering and polluting activities of Big Oil.

That was the response.

And while a few people can rightly note that they spoke out (Peter Fonda and Harry Shearer among them), the bulk of America remained silent then and now.

It was a key moment in Barack's first term and, as with so many other key moments, he clearly failed to do what was required.

He'd write episodes revolving around murder and torture and cannibalism but he's just not interested in rape.

Carter's gush included:“I don’t want to do rape stories on the show because I don’t find
them entertaining. I think that they’re exploitative,” Fuller told BuddyTV
in 2014. “I just feel very strongly as a feminist and somebody who
likes women. I just can’t derive any sort of entertainment pleasure from
it.”Last Saturday’s episode, “The Great Red Dragon,” reveals just how deeply this attitude is embedded in the show’s DNA. In the novel Red Dragon, a serial killer nicknamed the Tooth Fairy rapes his women victims’ near-dead (and dead) bodies. While Hannibal implies
that this violation occurs, the show doesn’t linger on the details—in
fact, only eager-eyed viewers likely notice that a sexual assault
happened at all. Instead, Hannibal treats the women’s bodies
with respect and grace. It emphasizes who the women were in life, how
they mattered to the people who loved them. It doesn’t reduce them to
their genitals.

Nor does the violence porn treat rape like anything other than a whispered aside.

For the record, rape is a crime.

It is an act of violence.

Bryan Fuller has no willies over other violence.

Maybe he's kidding himself about why he avoids portraying rape?

Just like he kids himself that doing yet another male dominated show is what a feminist would create?

Rape is rendered invisible -- the only violent crime that is -- and Ms. magazine thinks that's feminism?

Do they not realize how many women it took to get rape treated as a serious crime?

And now they applaud it being reduced to an offscreen whisper, a minor detail, not even a plot point?

“Democrats need a leader that can bring together races and nationalities, especially now and especially to win. That starts at the top of the campaign, and Hillary Clinton will need to demonstrate that level of commitment to set the right tone and strategy going forward” said Aimee Allison, senior VP at PowerPAC+, a group founded by major Democratic donor Steve Phillips to build the “political power of the multiracial majority.”

Oh, you dirty, little whore.

Aimee Allison, the whore who endorsed Barack Obama's use of drones was far from her alleged peace roots but lookie-lookie now at alleged Green Party member now safe in the moneyed bordello of the Democratic Party.

Shake that tired ass, Aimee, maybe someone will give you a five dollar bill for a half-and-half.

Masses come to Jeremy Corbyn rallies

Some 2,000 people turned out for a
rally to elect Jeremy Corbyn leader of the Labour Party in central
London on Monday of this week.

Almost an hour before the rally was due to start a queue of people
stretched right around the Camden Centre, where it was being held.

The massive event followed rallies of some 1,500 people in Liverpool
1,000 in Birmingham and hundreds more in towns and cities around
Britain.

The idea that thousands of people might cram into Labour Party
meetings in search of a political alternative would have been almost
unimaginable just a few months ago.

But Corbyn’s campaign has tapped into the deep seated anger and
desire for some kind of change felt by hundreds of thousands of people.

Many of those at the rallies said they had come because Corbyn represented something different to mainstream politics.

Viktor was at a London rally. He told Socialist Worker, “I’m 21 and
I’ve never voted. This is the first political event I’ve ever been to.

“It’s refreshing to see a politician that actually seems to care.”

Danielle said, “My family has always been Labour.

“But over the last few years I’ve been voting Green or even Lib Dem
when the whole Cleggmania fiasco was going on. But Corbyn really seems
to be bringing Labour back to what it was.”
Corbyn spoke to Socialist Worker after one rally. He said, “This groundswell of support has come from hope.

“It’s like the Stop the War movement in 2003. That was a movement
against the Iraq war. But this is a groundswell that’s for something.

“It’s for the kind of society that people want to live in. This is a movement that isn’t going to go away.”

The rallies do have the feel of a movement. Many of those around
Corbyn’s campaign were on the anti-Tory protests that exploded all
around the country after the election in May.

Danielle said, “I’m going to protest at the Tory Party conference. And I was on the big anti-austerity march in June.”

Around 500 people were left on the street outside the Camden rally, even after two overflow rooms were filled.Engine

Corbyn spoke to them from on top of a fire engine provided by the FBU union.

He has has won the support of the majority of the trade unions and
his campaign gains more popularity every time the right attack it.

Britain’s second biggest union, Unison, along with transport union
TSSA and the communications union the CWU also voted to back his
campaign last week.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward referred to Blairites in the Labour
Party as a “virus” and declared “Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote.”

Corbyn has also won the most constituency Labour Parties—152. Andy
Burnham won 111, Yvette Cooper finished on 106 and Liz Kendall won a
mere 18.

Corbyn is now pitching his campaign to beat the Tories in 2020 in response to those who dismiss him as a vote-loser for Labour.

Burnham accused Corbyn supporters of playing “a dangerous game”.

The right have held their grip on the Labour Party for over two
decades. They are dismayed to see it apparently being shattered in only a
matter of weeks.

Corbyn’s campaign is generating an enthusiasm for politics that looks a lot like the Yes campaign in Scotland.

But there the political alternative people looked to was outside Labour. Corbyn’s campaign sees it focused inside the party.

He wants people to “stay together to defend what we’ve got” after the
election. But he has already stated that he would include Blairite
opponents in any shadow cabinet.

But many of the thousands of Corbyn campaigners won’t want to be
limited by a project that looks to maintaining the unity within the
Labour Party.

The lessons of Syriza in Greece show the problems of simply looking to win change through parliament.

We need to organise to make the most of the potential for this mood
to be translated into a fightback and mass protests against the Tories
in workplaces and on the streets.

My Position on the Iran Deal

Every several years or so a legislator is called upon to cast a
momentous vote in which the stakes are high and both sides of the issue
are vociferous in their views.

Over the years, I have learned that the best way to treat such
decisions is to study the issue carefully, hear the full, unfiltered
explanation of those for and against, and then, without regard to
pressure, politics or party, make a decision solely based on the merits.

I have spent the last three weeks doing just that: carefully studying
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, reading and re-reading the
agreement and its annexes, questioning dozens of proponents and
opponents, and seeking answers to questions that go beyond the text of
the agreement but will have real consequences that must be considered.

Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view
that cannot simply be dismissed. This has made evaluating the agreement a
difficult and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful
thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose
the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval.

While we have come to different conclusions, I give tremendous credit
to President Obama for his work on this issue. The President, Secretary
Kerry and their team have spent painstaking months and years pushing
Iran to come to an agreement. Iran would not have come to the table
without the President’s persistent efforts to convince the Europeans,
the Russians, and the Chinese to join in the sanctions. In addition, it
was the President’s far-sighted focus that led our nation to accelerate
development of the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP), the best military
deterrent and antidote to a nuclear Iran. So whichever side one comes
down on in this agreement, all fair-minded Americans should acknowledge
the President’s strong achievements in combatting and containing Iran.
In making my decision, I examined this deal in three parts: nuclear
restrictions on Iran in the first ten years, nuclear restrictions on
Iran after ten years, and non-nuclear components and consequences of a
deal. In each case I have asked: are we better off with the agreement or
without it?

In the first ten years of the deal, there are serious weaknesses in
the agreement. First, inspections are not “anywhere, anytime”; the
24-day delay before we can inspect is troubling. While inspectors would
likely be able to detect radioactive isotopes at a site after 24 days,
that delay would enable Iran to escape detection of any illicit building
and improving of possible military dimensions (PMD) – the tools that go
into building a bomb but don’t emit radioactivity.

Furthermore, even when we detect radioactivity at a site where Iran
is illicitly advancing its bomb-making capability, the 24-day delay
would hinder our ability to determine precisely what was being done at
that site.

Even more troubling is the fact that the U.S. cannot demand
inspections unilaterally. By requiring the majority of the 8-member
Joint Commission, and assuming that China, Russia, and Iran will not
cooperate, inspections would require the votes of all three European
members of the P5+1 as well as the EU representative. It is reasonable
to fear that, once the Europeans become entangled in lucrative economic
relations with Iran, they may well be inclined not to rock the boat by
voting to allow inspections.

Additionally, the “snapback” provisions in the agreement seem
cumbersome and difficult to use. While the U.S. could unilaterally cause
snapback of all sanctions, there will be instances where it would be
more appropriate to snapback some but not all of the sanctions, because
the violation is significant but not severe. A partial snapback of
multilateral sanctions could be difficult to obtain, because the U.S.
would require the cooperation of other nations. If the U.S. insists on
snapback of all the provisions, which it can do unilaterally, and the
Europeans, Russians, or Chinese feel that is too severe a punishment,
they may not comply.

Those who argue for the agreement say it is better to have an
imperfect deal than to have nothing; that without the agreement, there
would be no inspections, no snapback. When you consider only this
portion of the deal – nuclear restrictions for the first ten years –
that line of thinking is plausible, but even for this part of the
agreement, the weaknesses mentioned above make this argument less
compelling.

Second, we must evaluate how this deal would restrict Iran’s nuclear development after ten years.
Supporters argue that after ten years, a future President would be in
no weaker a position than we are today to prevent Iran from racing to
the bomb. That argument discounts the current sanctions regime. After
fifteen years of relief from sanctions, Iran would be stronger
financially and better able to advance a robust nuclear program. Even
more importantly, the agreement would allow Iran, after ten to fifteen
years, to be a nuclear threshold state with the blessing of the world
community. Iran would have a green light to be as close, if not closer
to possessing a nuclear weapon than it is today. And the ability to
thwart Iran if it is intent on becoming a nuclear power would have less
moral and economic force.

If Iran’s true intent is to get a nuclear weapon, under this
agreement, it must simply exercise patience. After ten years, it can be
very close to achieving that goal, and, unlike its current unsanctioned
pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear program will be codified in
an agreement signed by the United States and other nations. To me, after
ten years, if Iran is the same nation as it is today, we will be worse
off with this agreement than without it.

In addition, we must consider the non-nuclear elements of the
agreement. This aspect of the deal gives me the most pause. For years,
Iran has used military force and terrorism to expand its influence in
the Middle East, actively supporting military or terrorist actions in
Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza. That is why the U.S. has
labeled Iran as one of only three nations in the world who are “state
sponsors of terrorism.” Under this agreement, Iran would receive at
least $50 billion dollars in the near future and would undoubtedly use
some of that money to redouble its efforts to create even more trouble
in the Middle East, and, perhaps, beyond.

To reduce the pain of sanctions, the Supreme Leader had to lean left
and bend to the moderates in his country. It seems logical that to
counterbalance, he will lean right and give the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard (IRGC) and the hardliners resources so that they can pursue their
number one goal: strengthening Iran’s armed forces and pursuing even
more harmful military and terrorist actions.

Finally, the hardliners can use the freed-up funds to build an ICBM
on their own as soon as sanctions are lifted (and then augment their
ICBM capabilities in 8 years after the ban on importing ballistic
weaponry is lifted), threatening the United States. Restrictions should
have been put in place limiting how Iran could use its new resources.

When it comes to the non-nuclear aspects of the deal, I think there
is a strong case that we are better off without an agreement than with
one.

Using the proponents’ overall standard – which is not whether the
agreement is ideal, but whether we are better with or without it – it
seems to me, when it comes to the nuclear aspects of the agreement
within ten years, we might be slightly better off with it. However, when
it comes to the nuclear aspects after ten years and the non-nuclear
aspects, we would be better off without it.

Ultimately, in my view, whether one supports or opposes the
resolution of disapproval depends on how one thinks Iran will behave
under this agreement.

If one thinks Iran will moderate, that contact with the West and a
decrease in economic and political isolation will soften Iran’s hardline
positions, one should approve the agreement. After all, a moderate
Iran is less likely to exploit holes in the inspection and sanctions
regime, is less likely to seek to become a threshold nuclear power after
ten years, and is more likely to use its newfound resources for
domestic growth, not international adventurism.

But if one feels that Iranian leaders will not moderate and their
unstated but very real goal is to get relief from the onerous sanctions,
while still retaining their nuclear ambitions and their ability to
increase belligerent activities in the Middle East and elsewhere, then
one should conclude that it would be better not to approve this
agreement.

Admittedly, no one can tell with certainty which way Iran will go. It
is true that Iran has a large number of people who want their
government to decrease its isolation from the world and focus on
economic advancement at home. But it is also true that this desire has
been evident in Iran for thirty-five years, yet the Iranian leaders have
held a tight and undiminished grip on Iran, successfully maintaining
their brutal, theocratic dictatorship with little threat. Who’s to say
this dictatorship will not prevail for another ten, twenty, or thirty
years?

To me, the very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will,
instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great.

Therefore, I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I
believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path
of diplomacy. It is because I believe Iran will not change, and under
this agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating
sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power.
Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce
secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path
of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.

For all of these reasons, I believe the vote to disapprove is the right one.

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About Me

Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).